need something simple,sleek, and cheap

[feo]

My External USB drive - WD 500 GB just recently crashed on me. I was pissed, it did so ... not even 30 days after the 1 year warranty expired. I will never buy Western Digital again. But thats a story for a different day.

Learning from my mistake, I want to put together something similar - only using Raid 1.

I am pricing the 500 GB SeaGate (they have the 5 year warranty) @ $75/ea ...

But where I run into issues - is the enclosure. Most of 'em that I see are kinda gaudy looking... especially the ones that can have 2 HDD's. Anyone have any suggestions, on decent simple enclosures that are inexpensive?

Also, to set up an external Raid 1 array ... via USB - is the actual enclosure configured? And is a warning given off on the enclosure if one of the HDD's fail ?

Sorry for the n00b questions - I'm relatively new at this =/

 

[sturm]

You need to get a NAS box. Normal drive enclosures wont handle raid.
Check out these at http://www.newegg.com/store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=124&Tpk=nas

 

[feo]

That makes things a bit more expensive - those NAS drive bays are kinda large, too ....

Why is this so much cheaper?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=250309234972

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=150298085263

Is that in a "NAS" box for it to be set up as a possible Raid 1 configuration? I was hoping to spend no more than $150. And I doubt the above sellers include SeaGate drives in their configuration.

 

[megamanx00]

The ones from eBay are cheaper because they offer less features. If you don't know the difference between RAID levels take a look at this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

The warranty on all Hard Drives is to just make it before their mean fail time. Some fail before, some fail after, but they will generally outlast the number of hours they are rated to be in use. In my experience WD is one of the more reliable makers though.

 

[feo]

I don't really want a lot of features - just a Raid 1 setup for mirroring ... and some kinda notification if one of the drives fail.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822102006

That is kinda nice - but I'm still looking @ $200 (after 2 x drives) ... and the HDD's are only 320 GB.

[EDIT]

http://www.buy.com/prod/dual-bay-raid-nas-0-1-3-5-sata-hdd-usb2-0-rj-45/q/loc/111/208715914.html

There's another good one - but its still $100 before any drives are included. Am I just being too wishful - and hoping I don't spend too much money? Adding in 2 x SeaGates is still gonna add up the price by an additional $120 ...

 

[feo]

I had just one last question (ha. promise!) about the following item:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822344001R

Its listed as "Galaxy 3500MGB-RAID Pro Diskless System Network Storage " - does the 3500 MGB indiciate a maximum size of some sort?

And would it be a poor idea for a windows user, since it doesn't support RAID NTFS file systems?

"RAID (EXT2, EXT3), non RAID (FAT32, EXT2, EXT3)
For RAID 0 & 1, two hard drives of identical capacity and make are required"